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I am sick to my stomach. I am scared. No, I’m beyond scared, I’m terrified. We are three days away from the most contentious election I have ever been witness to and I can not even begin to imagine what the world is going to look like in four days.

In the past year, less than a year, the level of vitriol, hate, prejudice, and downright nastiness that has been shared over the airwaves, online, and in person is beyond anything I have ever experienced. While I may be too young to remember the civil rights riots and well anything that happened before 1966, I do have memories of bigotry, segregation, and misogyny that have taken place in my lifetime. I’m also a student of history, it’s one subject I actually enjoyed in school, and firmly believe if we don’t learn from our past we are destined to repeat it over and over. Which I guess is what’s happening now.

But what really hits home about this is being a parent. My teenager is not yet old enough to vote but is old enough to be aware of what is going on in the world. The level of anxiety that this brings on for her, and in turn, me, I’m finding is difficult to describe.

It used to be that when I was a kid, I could look to the future and think “wow, I have my entire life ahead of me. There are so many amazing things on the horizon; inventions yet to be produced, cures yet to be discovered, experiences yet to be had.” We had hopes, dreams, and passions we all wanted to pursue.

When she looks to her future, she sees none of that. What she is faced with is a population that is killing off the planet. Robbing it of its resources and life-giving habitat. Not to mention what we are doing to the animals. She is faced with consumerism being the only reason to live; make money, buy stuff, repeat. Don’t think about saving money, just keep droning on, making those dollars, paying your taxes and debts, and turning a profit for the corporate giants that are taking control of every single aspect of our lives. Keep doing this until you die.

What kind of life is that? Is this really what we’ve become?

I’m not even going to speculate what the world will look like on November 9, 2016. Because every scenario I come up with, is not good. I only hope that we can come together as a country, as a world, as a human race, and somehow get past what has been dividing us, and save humanity before it’s too late.